


The Call

by bondageluvr (haganenoheichou)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 17:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2118708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haganenoheichou/pseuds/bondageluvr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a farce of a funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Call

**Author's Note:**

> Just a small writing exercise I did to try and restore my fiction writing capabilities – I am so rusty, it's not even funny. 
> 
> Inspired by the song "The Call" by Regina Spektor.

Black eyes watched the pyre go up in smoke as the crowd seemed to flow and ebb around it in waves, as if it were a real lake engulfing the remains of a real hero. He remembered the quiet funeral he’d witnessed decades before, as a boy, among the hidden folk that had retained their traditions from days past, when the knight, the fighter, the soldier, the _real man_ would be placed into a wooden boat together with all of his belongings and sent off down the cool surface of the lake. Arrows would be shot from bows of those who had been lucky enough to survive the ordeal the deceased had not, and the boat would burst into flames, taking the soldier to his last resting place among ash and water. 

This funeral was a sickly parody, a farce. It was a mockery of that sacred ritual; however, he could do nothing. The boy had asked to go this way. In fire. His friends absolutely refused to push him down the lakeshore, they decided to make a spectacle of the pyre, setting it up on the outskirts of the castle, right by what had been formerly a hut and now remained a pile of stone and wood. 

From afar, it would seem that the fire was dancing in the wind, relishing the lightness and speed of it much like the boy had – he had always been much more apt at controlling his motor functions in the air. The black eyed man allowed himself a small, tight smile and shuffled further behind the great oak tree that obscured him from view. There was no need for them to know he was attending. Better yet, there was no need for them to know he was alive. He had given his own life up to give the boy a chance – and it hadn’t been completely wasted, not really. The boy won, didn’t he?

The man’s heart contracted in his chest as he thought about the plan he had known of since the very start. _Like a pig for slaughter_. The boy deserved so much more. But such was the grand design of things, out of his own hands, out of the hands of the boy, or even their common enemy. The design belonged to only one master, who had been able to manipulate fate to suit everyone’s interests. 

Except the interests of those who had helped execute it. 

The fire danced higher and higher and sparks flew in all directions – red, orange, golden, yellowish. The boy would have liked to see his house colors as he went, the black-eyed man supposed. He sighed. _How childish._

A cry ripped through the sparkling silence of the clearing and a phoenix, the phoenix that had disappeared so long ago, flew at the flames, as if attacking them, as if wanting to become one with them. The bird flew at it vigorously and it seemed for a moment that the clearing rang with the boy’s laughter. 

The crowd watched the bird in awe as it flew closer and closer to the fire until finally, it joined the ardent dance and exploded into its new cycle of rebirth. 

The black eyed man hummed to himself and turned his back on the funeral. 

It was a farce. 

_You’ll come back._

_No need to say goodbye._


End file.
